Hybrid and battery electric powertrain controllers automatically manage the torque output of one or more prime movers, such as an internal combustion engine and/or one or more electric traction motors. Additional actuators such as friction brakes and wheel motors can act directly at each corner of the vehicle to provide a respective level of desired braking and propulsion force. Certain holistic control approaches can determine an optimal level of force to be applied at the various corners as a set of virtual control commands.
The effective transformation of the virtual control commands into a set of actual or true torque control commands is generally known as the control allocation problem. The control allocation problem may be particularly complex in the presence of a redundant actuator suite, i.e., when the number of actuators used at the corners or various wheel/road interfaces of a vehicle exceeds the number of forces to be controlled at the same corners. With a redundant actuator suite, there are several combinations of actuator positions which all produce the same virtual control, and hence provide the same overall system behavior.